Is it even necessary? When I plug my phone into the wall (USB cable plugs into the wall plug) it just charges but when I plug it into a computer it asks me what I want it to do.

That didn't work too well before, but I just tried copying from the JE itself and pasted to notepad, the funky slashdot renderings remained in the notepad copy so it was pretty easy.

That link would be helpful if I were using Word. I wonder if that is in Oo Write anywhere? I guess I should look... writing the books on the notebook, Oo in W7 (soon to be Oo in kubuntu, every Patch Tuesday the performance of this thing gets worse. Had a lot of apps crashing after patching, had to reboot twice to get damned Windows to be less retarded.

If MS thinks vandalizing my OS will get me to upgrade they're right - but the upgrade will be to Linux, not W8.

Of course they were, they had nothing to do with teeth, cavities, or cancer. And they weren't questions, they were snide remarks.

It's been 30 years since I've been on a plane, but I'd fly if I needed to. I'm far more averse to the hassle than the radiation, it was bad enough before the TSA.

Yeah, but it would have taken longer to change for slashdot than it did to write it. Not sure what to do about it.

It would be nice if a submission with smart quotes would autimatically change to dumb quotes. Just sayin'.

Another question: Does Hugh Pickens get paid for promoting this Slashdot article?

Are you getting paid to make offtopic comments? Nobody made you click the link. If you don't want to read it, don't read it.

I've wondered whether or not a dentist's drill could set you up for more cavities, does it perhaps cause microscopic cracks from the vibration?

At any rate I only see a dentist when a tooth hurts. I dislike having unnecessary ionizing radiation focused on my head, and dentists always want x-rays..

Other studies have shown a link between gum disease and heart disease. So whether you don't want cancer or don't want a heart attack, brush your teeth!

(The American Heart Association disagrees)

I suspect that at least half what is currently kept secret from the public is unnecessarily secret. And probably much more than half of what is left could at least be shared with Congress committees.

Congress, all of it, and the Senate, too, should be informed of what the executive branch does. Withholding information about the government itself from legislators is irrational.

This antipathy towards learning curves is a big part of today's society (the idiocracy).

I've always loved to learn, but one thing I hate is having to relearn. If a new tool has obvious advantages over an old tool I'm happy to learn the new tool: I'm lazy. I don't live to work, I work to live. I didn't mind learning Windows because it had obvious advantages over DOS. I didn't mind learning Linux because Windows was a PITA.

One reason it was such a pain was change for the sake of change, which Windows is even worse about now. Back in the '90s my employer was transitioning from Corel Office to Microsoft Office, so I took an Excel class. Two weeks after I took the class they upgraded to a newer version of Excel; that class was a complete waste of time because the New Excel was nothing like the old Excel (it was more like Quattro than the old Excel).

What's worse is when a change introduces complexity rather than simplicity, like that stupid Microsoft Ribbon. Rename editing functions from Edit to Home, WHY??? Changing the File menu to a colored button with no mouseover was just retarded. At least they fixed that little stupidity. Introducing the Microsoft car, with the throttle on the left and the brake on the right.

That's what I like about Linux; changes are almost always improvements (and when they aren't the community usually screams bloody murder). Microsoft's changes are usually just for the sake of introducing an unnecessary learning curve.

There's way too much useful, interesting stuff for any one person to learn, don't waste my time relearning an interface when I could be spending my time learning something useful.

Complex procedures do not work like they do in star trek.

I would have agreed with you before I got an Android phone. That thing is straight out of Star Trek. Microsoft's problem with W8 is they thought "people already know how to use a tablet so we'll make the desktop like a tablet." The trouble is, that's like designing your hammer to be more like a saw. They're different tools with different purposes. A car is not a bicycle, I don't want handlebars in my car.

I guess that's why I haven't seen it either.